We need your help on Election Day to keep PA Blue!
Download the PA Democratic Statewide Judicial Candidates Voter Guide at this link:
http://www.padems.com/Officials/Candidates/PA_Dems.pdf
A simple resolution to recognize October as Domestic Violence Awareness Month by the Pennsylvania House of Representatives was halted by Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, a Republican representing Butler. Why? Because, he said, “It has a homosexual agenda.”
On the same day, also on the House floor, he made matters worse. The House was about to vote on increasing marriage license fees from $3 to $28, with the increased amount going to a fund for victims of domestic abuse. Metcalfe opposed the measure, calling the funding a domestic violence programs “a slap in the face to family values.”2 The bill passed despite his outrageous claim.
More information at this link:
http://keystoneprogress.blogspot.com/2009/09/rep-metcalfe-domestic-violence-family.html
Metcalfe information:
http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/member_information/house_bio.cfm?id=13
Progressive Change Campaign Committee
Friday night, Keith Olbermann led his show talking about the PCCC's latest campaign:
"More than 200 former Obama staffers, 13,000 Obama volunteers, 23,000 Obama donors on a petition: A bill without a public option would not be 'change we can believe in.'"
And those numbers are increasing! All weekend, former Obama organizers are putting their skills to use -- calling and emailing other Obama organizers to get them involved in this campaign.
Will you add your voice to theirs -- and join the thousands of Obama voters, donors, and organizers who still believe we can defeat the insurance interests and bring real change to the health care system?
Please sign the petition at this link:
http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/5649/t/4951/content.jsp?content_KEY=2802&tag=pod_e2-non
Then, please forward this to friends. Time is of the essence. This Wednesday, President Obama will speak to Congress about his health care priorities.
We're making a national ad that will highlight the voices of former Obama staffers who want the public option -- and it will include the number of petition signers. So let's get the number as high as possible.
We need to make sure President Obama (and any White House staff urging him to capitulate) knows that the overwhelming majority of Americans want a public option -- and that includes those who worked hardest to get him elected. Can you add your name to the petition?
Thanks for being a bold progressive. -- Adam Green, Stephanie Taylor, Michael Snook, Evan Miller, Andrew Perez, and the PCCC team
http://boldprogressives.org/
Pennsylvania Democratic Party State Committee Meeting June 5 - 6
June 5-6, 2009The Westin Convention Center, Pittsburgh
We still have tickets for the Inaugural Catherine Baker Knoll Dinner, scheduled for Friday, June 5th, available at PA Dems Party Headquarters and padems.com. Call Rachel Moore at 717-920-8470 to order by phone or click here to order your tickets online.Join Governor Ed Rendell, Sen. Bob Casey, Sen. Arlen Specter and PA Democratic Party Chairman T.J. Rooney for what promises to be an unforgettable night honoring an unforgettable public servant.
And don't miss the FREE workshops on Friday afternoon. All workshops will be held in the Westmoreland Room and are open to all registered Democrats in Pennsylvania
A Personal Message for Obama Supporters from Judge Anne Lazarus
Democratic Candidate for Pennsylvania Superior Court – Vote Tuesday May 19,2009
My name is Anne Lazarus and I am a Democratic candidate for Superior Court. I'm asking for your support on May 19th.I began my career as a judge nearly 20 years ago when I was appointed by Governor Robert P. Casey as a merit selection judge to the Court of Common Pleas of the First Judicial District of Pennsylvania. On the Court of Common Pleas, I have served as a judge in both the Criminal and Civil Divisions and currently on the Orphans’ Court. I remain as excited today about the opportunity to dispense justice fairly and equally as I was when I first joined the court.For the past four years, I have served as Chair of the Ethics Committee of the Pennsylvania Conference of State Trial Judges, a role that requires me to provide guidance to judges throughout the Commonwealth on standards of ethical behavior as directed by the Code of Judicial Conduct. I am proud to say that no judge that has sought an advisory opinion from the committee, and has followed our advice, has ever been disciplined for misconduct.As committed as I have been to the law, I have been equally committed to the community and volunteering. I have served as a board member of the Philadelphia Volunteers for the Indigent Program and in 2006, the Pennsylvania Bar Association recognized my work with the first-ever Judicial Pro Bono Award. I also serve as an adjunct professor at the Widener University School of Law, the National Judicial College, and the National Institute of Trial Advocacy. I believe it was for all of these reasons that I was again given the Bar Association’s highest rating “Highly Recommended” for this campaign. They wrote that I am “intelligent, thoughtful, candid and scholarly, … and demonstrate superior writing ability, knowledge of the law and exceptional judicial temperament.” I am the only Democrat running for Superior Court who won the Bar’s highest rating. I hope I can count on your vote on May 19th. In the meantime, please do not hesitate to contact me at anne@lazarusforsuperiorcourt.org or 215-687-6348.Thank you.
http://www.lazarusforsuperiorcourt.org/
Obama Supporters the PA Democratic Judicial Candidates Need Your Help
Judge Jack Panella for Supreme Court http://votejackpanella.com/
Judge Anne E. Lazarus for Superior Court http://www.lazarusforsuperiorcourt.org/
Judge John Milton Younge for Superior Court http://www.judgejohnyounge.org/
Judge Robert J. Colville for Superior Court http://www.judgecolville.com/
Dan Bricmont for Commonwealth Court http://danbricmont.com/
Judge Jimmy Murray Lynn for Commonwealth Court http://www.padems.com/node/1765
Reminder it is petition time in Pennsylvania.
First day to circulate and file nomination petition February 17
Last day to circulate and file nomination petitions March 10
PA Democratic Municipal Primary May 19, 2009
Obama supporters stay active and engaged at the local level.
Your local Democratic Party needs your help and ideas.Use the PA Democratic Party map to locate your local party website.
PA Democratic Party County Map: http://www.padems.com/about/map
If the local county party does not have a website listed on the PA Democratic Party Map contact the PA Democratic Party for local contact information.
PA Democratic Party: http://www.padems.com//
http://www.padems.com/about/staff
“Jobs and wages” are the way to measure the strength of the economy, President-elect Barack Obama said as he announced additional members of his economic team, including the Secretaries-designate of Labor and Transportation.
“I know we will be headed in the right direction again when we are creating jobs, instead of losing them, and when Americans are gaining ground in terms of their incomes, instead of treading water or falling behind,” President-elect Obama said.
He announceed Congresswoman Hilda Solis as Secretary of Labor; former Congressman Ray LaHood as Secretary of Transportation; Karen Mills as Administrator of the Small Business Administration; and former Mayor Ron Kirk as United States Trade Representative.
“The appointees announced today will play an integral role in our efforts to turn our economy around,” he said.
In addition to announcing the appointments, the President-elect opened the press conference with remarks on what he called the Bush administration’s “necessary step” of promising emergency loans to the auto industry.
“The auto companies must not squander this chance to reform bad management practices and begin the long-term restructuring that is absolutely necessary to save this critical industry and the millions of American jobs that depend on it, while also creating the fuel-efficient cars of the future,” he said.
You can see photos from the event and read the text of the President-elect’s remarks below.
Good afternoon.
Before we begin, I’d like to say a few words about the necessary step taken today to help avoid a collapse in our auto industry that would have devastating consequences for our economy and our workers. With the short-term assistance provided by this package, the auto companies must bring all their stakeholders together – including labor, dealers, creditors and suppliers – to make the hard choices necessary to achieve long-term viability. The auto companies must not squander this chance to reform bad management practices and begin the long-term restructuring that is absolutely necessary to save this critical industry and the millions of American jobs that depend on it, while also creating the fuel-efficient cars of the future.
Whenever I have been asked how I measure the strength of the American economy, my answer is simple: jobs and wages. I know we will be headed in the right direction again when we are creating jobs, instead of losing them, and when Americans are gaining ground in terms of their incomes, instead of treading water or falling behind. In recent weeks, I’ve announced members of my economic team who will help us make progress in these areas.
Today, I’m announcing several other appointees who will play an integral role in our efforts to turn our economy around: Congresswoman Hilda Solis as Secretary of Labor; former Congressman Ray LaHood as Secretary of Transportation; Karen Mills as Administrator of the Small Business Administration; and Mayor Ron Kirk as United States Trade Representative. Together with the appointees I’ve already announced, these leaders will help craft a 21st Century Economic Recovery Plan, with the goal of creating two and a half million new jobs and strengthening our economy for the future.
If jobs and incomes are our yardsticks, then the success of the American worker is key to the success of the American economy. For the past eight years, the Department of Labor has not lived up to its role either as an advocate for hardworking families or as an arbiter of fairness in relations between labor and management. That will change when Hilda Solis is Secretary of Labor. Under her leadership, I am confident that the Department of Labor will once again stand up for working families.
Hilda has always been an advocate for everyday people. When she received an award several years ago, she said, “Fighting for what is just is not always popular, but it is necessary.” And that is exactly what she has done throughout her career, blazing new trails every step of the way. Whether it’s creating green jobs that pay well and can’t be outsourced or expanding access to affordable health care or raising the minimum wage in California, Hilda has been a champion of our middle class. And I know that Hilda will show the same kind of leadership as Secretary of Labor that she showed in California and on the Education and Labor Committee by protecting workers’ rights – from organizing to collective bargaining, from keeping our workplaces safe to making our unions strong.
Standing up for our workers means putting them back to work and fueling economic growth. Our economy boomed in the 20th Century when President Eisenhower remade the American landscape by building the interstate highway system. Now we need to remake our transportation system for the 21st Century. Doing so will not only help us meet our energy challenge by building more efficient cars, buses, and subways or make Americans safer by rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges – it will create millions of new jobs in the process.
Few understand our infrastructure challenge better than the outstanding public servant I am asking to lead the Department of Transportation – Ray LaHood. As a Congressman from Illinois, Ray served six years on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, leading efforts to modernize our aviation system by renewing our aging airports and ensuring that air traffic controllers were using cutting edge technology. Throughout his career, Ray has fought to improve mass transit and invest in our highways. But he has not only helped rebuild our landscape, he has helped beautify it by creating opportunities for bikers and runners to enjoy our great outdoors. When I began this appointment process, I said I was committed to finding the best person for the job, regardless of party. Ray’s appointment reflects that bipartisan spirit – a spirit we need to reclaim in this country to make progress for the American people.
To strengthen our economy, we must also strengthen the small businesses that are its backbone. I can think of no one better to lead this effort as Administrator of the Small Business Administration than Karen Mills. With Karen at the helm, America’s small businesses will have a partner in Washington, helping them create jobs and spur growth in communities across this country. A venture capitalist who invests in small businesses, Karen understands the challenges faced by both small business owners and the workers they employ. With a background in the private sector and experience helping Maine’s governor promote growth across the state, I am confident that Karen will lead an SBA that will not only help small business owners realize their dreams, but help our nation rebuild our economy.
We also know that the success of American businesses, small and large, depends on their ability to sell their products across the globe. That is why we must engage in strong, robust trade and open doors for American products. In our global economy, we must compete and win if we are going to strengthen our middle class and forge bonds with other nations that can contribute to peace and stability around the world. But I also believe that any trade agreement we sign must be written not just with the interests of big corporations in mind, but with the interests of our whole nation and our workers at heart.
Ron Kirk understands this better than just about anyone. As Mayor of Dallas, Ron helped steer one of the world’s largest economies. He has seen the promise of trade, but also its pitfalls. And he knows there is nothing inconsistent about standing up for free trade and standing up for American workers. During his tenure as Mayor, Ron brought different groups together to create jobs, invest in the community, and spur economic growth. As a leader, negotiator, and principled proponent of trade, Ron will help make sure that any agreements I sign as President protect the rights of all workers, promote the interests of all Americans, and preserve the planet we all share.
With these outstanding appointees, I have filled out our economic team, and done so at an earlier point than any President in history, because we face challenges unlike any we have faced in generations.
Daunting as the challenges we are inheriting may be, I’m convinced that our team and the American people are prepared to meet them. It will take longer than any of us would like – years, and not months. It will get worse before it gets better. But it will get better – if we’re willing to act boldly and swiftly. And that is what we will do when I am President of the United States.
For the first time, the weekly Democratic address has been released as a web video. It will also continue to air on the radio.
President-elect Obama plans to to publish these weekly updates through the Transition and then from the White House.
Today's address from the President-elect concerns the current economic crisis:
Also available on AOL, Yahoo, and MSN High-resolution, Quicktime format: (106MB .mov file).
Remarks of President-elect Barack Obama
November 15, 2008
Today, the leaders of the G-20 countries -- a group that includes the world's largest economies -- are gathering in Washington to seek solutions to the ongoing turmoil in our financial markets. I'm glad President Bush has initiated this process -- because our global economic crisis requires a coordinated global response.
And yet, as we act in concert with other nations, we must also act immediately here at home to address America's own economic crisis. This week, amid continued volatility in our markets, we learned that unemployment insurance claims rose to their highest levels since September 11, 2001. We've lost jobs for ten straight months -- nearly 1.2 million jobs this year, many of them in our struggling auto industry. And millions of our fellow citizens lie awake each night wondering how they're going to pay their bills, stay in their homes, and save for retirement.
Make no mistake: this is the greatest economic challenge of our time. And while the road ahead will be long, and the work will be hard, I know that we can steer ourselves out of this crisis -- because here in America we always rise to the moment, no matter how hard. And I am more hopeful than ever before that America will rise once again.
But we must act right now. Next week, Congress will meet to address the spreading impact of the economic crisis. I urge them to pass at least a down-payment on a rescue plan that will create jobs, relieve the squeeze on families, and help get the economy growing again. In particular, we cannot afford to delay providing help for the more than one million Americans who will have exhausted their unemployment insurance by the end of this year. If Congress does not pass an immediate plan that gives the economy the boost it needs, I will make it my first order of business as President.
Even as we dig ourselves out of this recession, we must also recognize that out of this economic crisis comes an opportunity to create new jobs, strengthen our middle class, and keep our economy competitive in the 21st century.
That starts with the kinds of long-term investments that we've neglected for too long. That means putting two million Americans to work rebuilding our crumbling roads, bridges, and schools. It means investing $150 billion to build an American green energy economy that will create five million new jobs, while freeing our nation from the tyranny of foreign oil, and saving our planet for our children. It means making health care affordable for anyone who has it, accessible for anyone who wants it, and reducing costs for small businesses. And it also means giving every child the world-class education they need to compete with any worker, anywhere in the world.
Doing all this will require not just new policies, but a new spirit of service and sacrifice, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. If this financial crisis has taught us anything, it's that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers -- in this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as one people. And that is how we will meet the challenges of our time -- together. Thank you.
The story of the campaign and this historic moment has been your story. Share your story and your ideas, and be part of bringing positive lasting change to this country.
Don't forget to vote tomorrow, PA. Here's a great post from the Christian Science Monitor.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1103/p09s02-coop.html
My wife made me canvass for Obama; here's what I learnedThis election is not about major policies. It's about hope.By Jonathan Curleyfrom the November 3, 2008 edition
CHARLOTTE, N.C. - There has been a lot of speculation that Barack Obama might win the election due to his better "ground game" and superior campaign organization.I had the chance to view that organization up close this month when I canvassed for him. I'm not sure I learned much about his chances, but I learned a lot about myself and about this election.Let me make it clear: I'm pretty conservative. I grew up in the suburbs. I voted for George H.W. Bush twice, and his son once. I was disappointed when Bill Clinton won, and disappointed he couldn't run again.I encouraged my son to join the military. I was proud of him in Afghanistan, and happy when he came home, and angry when he was recalled because of the invasion of Iraq. I'm white, 55, I live in the South and I'm definitely going to get a bigger tax bill if Obama wins.I am the dreaded swing voter.So you can imagine my surprise when my wife suggested we spend a Saturday morning canvassing for Obama. I have never canvassed for any candidate. But I did, of course, what most middle-aged married men do: what I was told.At the Obama headquarters, we stood in a group to receive our instructions. I wasn't the oldest, but close, and the youngest was maybe in high school. I watched a campaign organizer match up a young black man who looked to be college age with a white guy about my age to canvas together. It should not have been a big thing, but the beauty of the image did not escape me.Instead of walking the tree-lined streets near our home, my wife and I were instructed to canvass a housing project. A middle-aged white couple with clipboards could not look more out of place in this predominantly black neighborhood.We knocked on doors and voices from behind carefully locked doors shouted, "Who is it?""We're from the Obama campaign," we'd answer. And just like that doors opened and folks with wide smiles came out on the porch to talk.Grandmothers kept one hand on their grandchildren and made sure they had all the information they needed for their son or daughter to vote for the first time.Young people came to the door rubbing sleep from their eyes to find out where they could vote early, to make sure their vote got counted.We knocked on every door we could find and checked off every name on our list. We did our job, but Obama may not have been the one who got the most out of the day's work.I learned in just those three hours that this election is not about what we think of as the "big things."It's not about taxes. I'm pretty sure mine are going to go up no matter who is elected.It's not about foreign policy. I think we'll figure out a way to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan no matter which party controls the White House, mostly because the people who live there don't want us there anymore.I don't see either of the candidates as having all the answers.I've learned that this election is about the heart of America. It's about the young people who are losing hope and the old people who have been forgotten. It's about those who have worked all their lives and never fully realized the promise of America, but see that promise for their grandchildren in Barack Obama. The poor see a chance, when they often have few. I saw hope in the eyes and faces in those doorways.My wife and I went out last weekend to knock on more doors. But this time, not because it was her idea. I don't know what it's going to do for the Obama campaign, but it's doing a lot for me.Jonathan Curley is a banker. He voted for George H.W. Bush twice and George W. Bush once.
An endorsement from William F. Buckley's son, Christopher.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-10-10/the-conservative-case-for-obama/
The son of William F. Buckley has decided—shock!—to vote for a Democrat.
Let me be the latest conservative/libertarian/whatever to leap onto the Barack Obama bandwagon. It’s a good thing my dear old mum and pup are no longer alive. They’d cut off my allowance.
Or would they? But let’s get that part out of the way. The only reason my vote would be of any interest to anyone is that my last name happens to be Buckley—a name I inherited. So in the event anyone notices or cares, the headline will be: “William F. Buckley’s Son Says He Is Pro-Obama.” I know, I know: It lacks the throw-weight of “Ron Reagan Jr. to Address Democratic Convention,” but it’ll have to do.
Dear Pup once said to me, “You know, I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.”
I am—drum roll, please, cue trumpets—making this announcement in the cyberpages of The Daily Beast (what joy to be writing for a publication so named!) rather than in the pages of National Review, where I write the back-page column. For a reason: My colleague, the superb and very dishy Kathleen Parker, recently wrote in National Review Online a column stating what John Cleese as Basil Fawlty would call “the bleeding obvious”: namely, that Sarah Palin is an embarrassment, and a dangerous one at that. She’s not exactly alone. New York Times columnist David Brooks, who began his career at NR, just called Governor Palin “a cancer on the Republican Party.”
As for Kathleen, she has to date received 12,000 (quite literally) foam-at-the-mouth hate-emails. One correspondent, if that’s quite the right word, suggested that Kathleen’s mother should have aborted her and tossed the fetus into a Dumpster. There’s Socratic dialogue for you. Dear Pup once said to me sighfully after a right-winger who fancied himself a WFB protégé had said something transcendently and provocatively cretinous, “You know, I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.” Well, the dear man did his best. At any rate, I don’t have the kidney at the moment for 12,000 emails saying how good it is he’s no longer alive to see his Judas of a son endorse for the presidency a covert Muslim who pals around with the Weather Underground. So, you’re reading it here first.
As to the particulars, assuming anyone gives a fig, here goes:
I have known John McCain personally since 1982. I wrote a well-received speech for him. Earlier this year, I wrote in The New York Times—I’m beginning to sound like Paul Krugman, who cannot begin a column without saying, “As I warned the world in my last column...”—a highly favorable Op-Ed about McCain, taking Rush Limbaugh and the others in the Right Wing Sanhedrin to task for going after McCain for being insufficiently conservative. I don’t—still—doubt that McCain’s instincts remain fundamentally conservative. But the problem is otherwise.
McCain rose to power on his personality and biography. He was authentic. He spoke truth to power. He told the media they were “jerks” (a sure sign of authenticity, to say nothing of good taste; we are jerks). He was real. He was unconventional. He embraced former anti-war leaders. He brought resolution to the awful missing-POW business. He brought about normalization with Vietnam—his former torturers! Yes, he erred in accepting plane rides and vacations from Charles Keating, but then, having been cleared on technicalities, groveled in apology before the nation. He told me across a lunch table, “The Keating business was much worse than my five and a half years in Hanoi, because I at least walked away from that with my honor.” Your heart went out to the guy. I thought at the time, God, this guy should be president someday.
A year ago, when everyone, including the man I’m about to endorse, was caterwauling to get out of Iraq on the next available flight, John McCain, practically alone, said no, no—bad move. Surge. It seemed a suicidal position to take, an act of political bravery of the kind you don’t see a whole lot of anymore.
But that was—sigh—then. John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994, “We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us.” This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?
All this is genuinely saddening, and for the country is perhaps even tragic, for America ought, really, to be governed by men like John McCain—who have spent their entire lives in its service, even willing to give the last full measure of their devotion to it. If he goes out losing ugly, it will be beyond tragic, graffiti on a marble bust.
As for Senator Obama: He has exhibited throughout a “first-class temperament,”pace Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.’s famous comment about FDR. As for his intellect, well, he’s a Harvard man, though that’s sure as heck no guarantee of anything, these days. Vietnam was brought to you by Harvard and (one or two) Yale men. As for our current adventure in Mesopotamia, consider this lustrous alumni roster. Bush 43: Yale. Rumsfeld: Princeton. Paul Bremer: Yale and Harvard. What do they all have in common? Andover! The best and the brightest.
I’ve read Obama’s books, and they are first-rate. He is that rara avis, the politician who writes his own books. Imagine. He is also a lefty. I am not. I am a small-government conservative who clings tenaciously and old-fashionedly to the idea that one ought to have balanced budgets. On abortion, gay marriage, et al, I’m libertarian. I believe with my sage and epigrammatic friend P.J. O’Rourke that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take it all away.
But having a first-class temperament and a first-class intellect, President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics aren’t going to get us out of this pit we’ve dug for ourselves. If he raises taxes and throws up tariff walls and opens the coffers of the DNC to bribe-money from the special interest groups against whom he has (somewhat disingenuously) railed during the campaign trail, then he will almost certainly reap a whirlwind that will make Katrina look like a balmy summer zephyr.
Obama has in him—I think, despite his sometimes airy-fairy “We are the people we have been waiting for” silly rhetoric—the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for.
So, I wish him all the best. We are all in this together. Necessity is the mother of bipartisanship. And so, for the first time in my life, I’ll be pulling the Democratic lever in November. As the saying goes, God save the United States of America.
A Conservative for Obama
My party has slipped its moorings. It’s time for a true pragmatist to lead the country.Leading Off
By Wick Allison, EDITOR IN CHIEF
Liberalism always seemed to me to be a system of “oughts.” We ought to do this or that because it’s the right thing to do, regardless of whether it works or not. It is a doctrine based on intentions, not results, on feeling good rather than doing good.
But today it is so-called conservatives who are cemented to political programs when they clearly don’t work. The Bush tax cuts—a solution for which there was no real problem and which he refused to end even when the nation went to war—led to huge deficit spending and a $3 trillion growth in the federal debt. Facing this, John McCain pumps his “conservative” credentials by proposing even bigger tax cuts. Meanwhile, a movement that once fought for limited government has presided over the greatest growth of government in our history. That is not conservatism; it is profligacy using conservatism as a mask.
Today it is conservatives, not liberals, who talk with alarming bellicosity about making the world “safe for democracy.” It is John McCain who says America’s job is to “defeat evil,” a theological expansion of the nation’s mission that would make George Washington cough out his wooden teeth.
This kind of conservatism, which is not conservative at all, has produced financial mismanagement, the waste of human lives, the loss of moral authority, and the wreckage of our economy that McCain now threatens to make worse.
Barack Obama is not my ideal candidate for president. (In fact, I made the maximum donation to John McCain during the primaries, when there was still hope he might come to his senses.) But I now see that Obama is almost the ideal candidate for this moment in American history. I disagree with him on many issues. But those don’t matter as much as what Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. Nobody can read Obama’s books (which, it is worth noting, he wrote himself) or listen to him speak without realizing that this is a thoughtful, pragmatic, and prudent man. It gives me comfort just to think that after eight years of George W. Bush we will have a president who has actually read the Federalist Papers.
Most important, Obama will be a realist. I doubt he will taunt Russia, as McCain has, at the very moment when our national interest requires it as an ally. The crucial distinction in my mind is that, unlike John McCain, I am convinced he will not impulsively take us into another war unless American national interests are directly threatened.
“Every great cause,” Eric Hoffer wrote, “begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” As a cause, conservatism may be dead. But as a stance, as a way of making judgments in a complex and difficult world, I believe it is very much alive in the instincts and predispositions of a liberal named Barack Obama.
Write to wicka@dmagazine.com.
For easy reference, I thought I'd post the upcoming debate schedule here, as it is hard to find anywhere else in the Obama site.
First presidential debate:Friday, September 26University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS
Vice presidential debate:Thursday, October 2Washington University in St. Louis, MO
Second presidential debate:Tuesday, October 7Belmont University, Nashville, TN
Third presidential debate:Wednesday, October 15Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/opinion/27rich.html
How Obama Became Acting PresidentBy FRANK RICH
Published: July 27, 2008
IT almost seems like a gag worthy of “Borat”: A smooth-talking rookie senator with an exotic name passes himself off as the incumbent American president to credulous foreigners. But to dismiss Barack Obama’s magical mystery tour through old Europe and two war zones as a media-made fairy tale would be to underestimate the ingenious politics of the moment. History was on the march well before Mr. Obama boarded his plane, and his trip was perfectly timed to reap the whirlwind.He never would have been treated as a president-in-waiting by heads of state or network talking heads if all he offered were charisma, slick rhetoric and stunning visuals. What drew them instead was the raw power Mr. Obama has amassed: the power to start shaping events and the power to move markets, including TV ratings. (Even “Access Hollywood” mustered a 20 percent audience jump by hosting the Obama family.) Power begets more power, absolutely.The growing Obama clout derives not from national polls, where his lead is modest. Nor is it a gift from the press, which still gives free passes to its old bus mate John McCain. It was laughable to watch journalists stamp their feet last week to try to push Mr. Obama into saying he was “wrong” about the surge. More than five years and 4,100 American fatalities later, they’re still not demanding that Mr. McCain admit he was wrong when he assured us that our adventure in Iraq would be fast, produce little American “bloodletting” and “be paid for by the Iraqis.”Never mind. This election remains about the present and the future, where Iraq’s $10 billion a month drain on American pocketbooks and military readiness is just one moving part in a matrix of national crises stretching from the gas pump to Pakistan. That’s the high-rolling political casino where Mr. Obama amassed the chips he cashed in last week. The “change” that he can at times wield like a glib marketing gimmick is increasingly becoming a substantive reality — sometimes through Mr. Obama’s instigation, sometimes by luck. Obama-branded change is snowballing, whether it’s change you happen to believe in or not.Looking back now, we can see that the fortnight preceding the candidate’s flight to Kuwait was like a sequence in an old movie where wind blows away calendar pages to announce an epochal plot turn. First, on July 7, the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, dissed Bush dogma by raising the prospect of a withdrawal timetable for our troops. Then, on July 15, Mr. McCain suddenly noticed that more Americans are dying in Afghanistan than Iraq and called for more American forces to be sent there. It was a long-overdue recognition of the obvious that he could no longer avoid: both Robert Gates, the defense secretary, and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had already called for more American troops to battle the resurgent Taliban, echoing the policy proposed by Mr. Obama a year ago.On July 17 we learned that President Bush, who had labeled direct talks with Iran “appeasement,” would send the No. 3 official in the State Department to multilateral nuclear talks with Iran. Lest anyone doubt that the White House had moved away from the rigid stand endorsed by Mr. McCain and toward Mr. Obama’s, a former Rumsfeld apparatchik weighed in on The Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page: “Now Bush Is Appeasing Iran.”Within 24 hours, the White House did another U-turn, endorsing an Iraq withdrawal timetable as long as it was labeled a “general time horizon.” In a flash, as Mr. Obama touched down in Kuwait, Mr. Maliki approvingly cited the Democratic candidate by name while laying out a troop-withdrawal calendar of his own that, like Mr. Obama’s, would wind down in 2010. On Tuesday, the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, announced a major drawdown of his nation’s troops by early 2009.But it’s not merely the foreign policy consensus that is shifting Obama-ward. The Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens has now joined another high-profile McCain supporter, Arnold Schwarzenegger, in knocking the McCain nostrum that America can drill its way out of its energy crisis. Mr. Pickens, who financed the Swift-boat campaign smearing John Kerry in 2004, was thought to be a sugar daddy for similar assaults against the Democrats this year. Instead, he is underwriting nonpartisan ads promoting wind power and speaks of how he would welcome Al Gore as energy czar if there’s an Obama administration.The Obama stampede is forcing Mr. McCain to surrender on other domestic fronts. After the Democrat ran ads in 14 states berating chief executives who are “making more in 10 minutes” than many workers do in a year, a newly populist Mr. McCain began railing against “corporate greed” — much as he also followed Mr. Obama’s example and belatedly endorsed a homeowners’ bailout he had at first opposed. Given that Mr. McCain has already used a refitted, hand-me-down Obama campaign slogan (“A Leader You Can Believe In”), it can’t be long before he takes up fist bumps. They’ve become the rage among young (nonterrorist) American businessmen, according to USA Today.“We have one president at a time,” Mr. Obama is careful to say. True, but the sitting president, a lame duck despised by voters and shunned by his own party’s candidates, now has all the gravitas of Mr. Cellophane in “Chicago.” The opening for a successor arrived prematurely, and the vacuum had been waiting to be filled. What was most striking about the Obama speech in Berlin was not anything he said so much as the alternative reality it fostered: many American children have never before seen huge crowds turn out abroad to wave American flags instead of burn them.Mr. McCain could also have stepped into the leadership gap left by Mr. Bush’s de facto abdication. His inability to even make a stab at doing so is troubling. While drama-queen commentators on television last week were busy building up false suspense about the Obama trip — will he make a world-class gaffe? will he have too large an audience in Germany? — few focused on the alarms that Mr. McCain’s behavior at home raise about his fitness to be president.Once again the candidate was making factual errors about the only subject he cares about, imagining an Iraq-Pakistan border and garbling the chronology of the Anbar Awakening. Once again he displayed a tantrum-prone temperament ill-suited to a high-pressure 21st-century presidency. His grim-faced crusade to brand his opponent as a traitor who wants to “lose a war” isn’t even a competent impersonation of Joe McCarthy. Mr. McCain comes off instead like the ineffectual Mr. Wilson, the retired neighbor perpetually busting a gasket at the antics of pesky little Dennis the Menace.The week’s most revealing incident occurred on Wednesday when the new, supposedly improved McCain campaign management finalized its grand plan to counter Mr. Obama’s Berlin speech with a “Mission Accomplished”-like helicopter landing on an oil rig off Louisiana’s coast. The announcement was posted on politico.com even as any American with a television could see that Hurricane Dolly was imminent. Needless to say, this bit of theater was almost immediately “postponed” but not before raising the question of whether a McCain administration would be just as hapless in anticipating the next Katrina as the Bush-Brownie storm watch.When not plotting such stunts, the McCain campaign whines about its lack of press attention like a lover jilted for a younger guy. The McCain camp should be careful what it wishes for. As its relentless goading of Mr. Obama to visit Iraq only ratcheted up anticipation for the Democrat’s triumphant trip, so its insistent demand for joint town-hall meetings with Mr. Obama and for more televised chronicling of Mr. McCain’s wanderings could be self-inflicted disasters in the making.Mr. McCain may be most comfortable at town-hall meetings before largely friendly crowds, but his performance under pressure at this year’s G.O.P. primary debates was erratic. His sound-bite-deep knowledge of the country’s No. 1 issue, the economy, is a Gerald Ford train wreck waiting to happen in any matchup with Mr. Obama that requires focused, time-limited answers rather than rambling.During Mr. McCain’s last two tours of the Middle East — conducted without the invasive scrutiny of network anchors — the only news he generated was his confusion of Sunni with Shia and his embarrassing stroll through a “safe” Baghdad market with helicopter cover. He should thank his stars that few TV viewers saw that he was even less at home when walking through a chaotic Pennsylvania supermarket last week. He inveighed against the price of milk while reading from a note card and felt the pain of a shopper planted by the local Republican Party.The election remains Mr. Obama’s to lose, and he could lose it, whether through unexpected events, his own vanity or a vice-presidential misfire. But what we’ve learned this month is that America, our allies and most likely the next Congress are moving toward Mr. Obama’s post-Iraq vision of the future, whether he reaches the White House or not. That’s some small comfort as we contemplate the strange alternative offered by the Republicans: a candidate so oblivious to our nation’s big challenges ahead that he is doubling down in his campaign against both Mr. Maliki and Mr. Obama to be elected commander in chief of the surge.
Here's a great article about Obama's support from conservatives from the San Francisco Chronicle.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/06/MN3T11JI0P.DTL&type=politics
From Politico's Ben Smith.
I love the last quote. I made it bold.
McGovern switches to ObamaCarrie Budoff Brown reports from Sioux Falls, SD, that Barack Obama collected the endorsement of former Senator George McGovern, a Democratic Party elder but also a symbol of liberal defeat who came out for Obama last week.McGovern, the 1972 Democratic presidential candidate and former South Dakota senator, made a memorable endorsement last October of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, telling an Iowa crowd: “We have an old rule of courtesy in the United States: Ladies first.”Not anymore. He made his switch to the Obama campaign official Friday, introducing the Illinois senator at a rally here.“I have three daughters and one son, and 10 grandchildren,” McGovern said. “After I endorsed Senator Clinton, all 14 of them enlisted in the Obama campaign. That is some measure of the influence I had at home.”By Ben Smith 08:17 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mona-gable/why-hillary-lost-my-daugh_b_101567.html
Why Hillary Lost My Daughter and Me
Mona Gable
This morning I asked my 15-year-old daughter what she didn't like about Hillary Clinton."I mean at the beginning, before she started going negative and attacking Barack Obama," I said, trying to rewind history.My daughter was sitting at the kitchen table, where thousands of impassioned conversations in America have taken place last year about the historic possibility of the first female president. She didn't have much trouble answering. Not simply because she's a thoughtful young woman, an unabashed feminist, who relishes a good political argument as much as her mother.Compared with that other historic candidate, for her there was no contest. "I didn't find her inspirational at all," she said flatly of Clinton.As for Barack Obama, she heard in his soothing voice, his brilliant speeches, his very demeanor, the language of her generation. The language of inclusion and hope. "He talks about change, and I believe him," my daughter said, her face lighting up.We've heard a lot about the power of inspiration during this long heated race. From the beginning Hillary was roundly dismissive of such talk. Oh, those naïve young people! she condescended. Those starry-eyed kids drinking the Obama punch! Maybe if she had been less tone-deaf, less a political weathervane changing her message and her campaign staff (remember Clinton loyalist Patti Solis Doyle?) almost as often as her suits, Hillary might not have caused such angst and handwringing among feminists. Even as older women and feminists icons like Gloria Steinem rallied to her, many young women found her stuffy, rigid, imperious -- a throwback to establishment politics.As Obama supporter Courtney Martin wrote on Glamour magazine's blog last month about part of her discomfort with Hillary: "She reminds me of being scolded by my mother."Obama's ability to inspire young people is precisely what has energized my daughter, whose enduring memory of the presidency has been the nightmarish Bush years. She doesn't feel conflicted in the least. And it's hard for me to blame her. This is why the daughters of Caroline Kennedy and Claire McCaskill -- hardly feminist "traitors" as Hillary defectors have been so absurdly called -- were able to persuade their politically savvy mothers to come out for Obama. His promise of change.Unlike my daughter, part of me feels sad for Clinton as her campaign sputters to an end. Part of me wanted her to succeed. Not because I believed her to be "ready on Day One" to use her embarrassingly hackneyed claim. Or because of her tireless efforts to reform health care, another tragic failure of the Bush years. Or because she embodied for me all the times I had seen women earn less for doing the same job as men. A reality that continues to afflict working women in this country with little progress in sight. My reasons are purely emotional. I have friends who believed in Hillary. I understand their disappointment.If only she had been the right woman at the right time. And this is what it comes down to, not only for my daughter but for millions of young, middle-aged and older women in America. They placed their faith in Clinton's candidacy, only to find her wanting. Perhaps it was partly our fault. We saw in her defeat in Iowa, in her victories in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, and now tonight surely in West Virginia, a symbol of what women had fought for - -the right to not just sit at the table but to actually lead.But mostly I feel sad for her female supporters, the ones I saw last night standing behind her at a rally in West Virginia. The elderly women gamely waving their Hillary signs before the TV cameras cut away. Trying to put on a good front. Knowing that their dream is about to die.
The original is here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-j-andrew/on-my-switch-from-clinton_b_99621.html
Here's the text:
On My Switch From Clinton To Obama
I have been inspired.
Today I am announcing my support for Senator Barack Obama for President of the United States of America. I am changing my support from Senator Clinton to Senator Obama, and calling for my fellow Democrats across my home State of Indiana, and my fellow super delegates across the nation, to heal the rift in our Party and unite behind Barack Obama.
The hardest decisions in life are not between good and bad or right and wrong, but between two goods or two rights. That is the decision Democrats face today. We have an embarrassment of riches, but as much as we may love our candidates and revel in the political process that has brought Presidential politics to places that have not seen it in a generation, we cannot let our family affair hurt America by helping John McCain.
Here is my message, explained in this lengthy letter that I hope is perceived as a thoughtful analysis of how to save America from four more years of the misguided polices of the past: you can be for someone without being against someone else. You can unite behind a candidate and a vision for America without rejecting another candidate and their vision, because in real life, opposed to party politics, we Democrats are on the same side. The battle should not be amongst ourselves. Rather, we should focus our efforts on those who are truly on the opposite side: those who want to continue the failed policies of the last eight years, rather than bring real change to Washington. Let us come together right now behind an inspiring leader who not only has the audacity to challenge the old divisive politics, but the audacity to make us all hope for a better America.
